Citizens’ Participation : Palermo, an Italian Case Study of Civic Engagement

Abstract

Since the 1990s, much of the international literature on participation has been focused on the disaffection of citizens to- ward politics (Rosanvallon, 2008, 2011); the connection be- tween representative democracy and deliberative democracy (Macaluso, 2007); the presence of citizens in policy making and the new forms of participation. However, in the last few years, the civic engagement experiences have been numerous in the whole world. We can distinguish between top–down and bottom–up forms of governance promoted by citizens.In this paper we discuss some forms of bottom–up participation of citizens.